Chris O’Dowd plays journalist David Walsh In The Program

Chris O’Dowd has
become a bit of a disgruntled sports fan. His beloved Liverpool are in what
seems like perpetual change and the arrival of Jürgen Klopp is far from a
guarantee that the 25-year search for a Premier League title will end. At least
he can’t blame Liverpool’s demise on other team’s cheating and that’s what’s
really got his ire up. He’s been spending the past few months trying to work
out the enigma that is Lance Armstrong, the cycling superstar who overcame
cancer to win the Tour de France seven times. It was a unique achievement at
arguably sport’s toughest endurance event. Then came the revelation that it was
a house built on lies.

In Stephen Frears’ The Program, O’Dowd
plays journalist David Walsh, the man who refused to believe Armstrong’s lies,
even when the cyclist successfully sued Walsh’s paper for libel, winning a multimillion-pound
payout. O’Dowd has the same zealous belief that science and doping are making a
mockery of sport. “For me as a sports
fan, I have no interest in watching pharmacists and doctors competing to come
up with the best concoctions,” says the Irish actor.

He has a similar
disdain for Formula 1, because it relies so much on the technical prowess of
the mechanics. O’Dowd’s main interest is the skill of the individual, which
probably explains why he became an actor, being judged on his ability to mimic
or bring a character to life, even when he’s part of an ensemble.

The 36-year-old is
best known as a comic, a reputation that goes back to the flirting state patrol
officer he portrayed in Bridesmaids. But he didn’t want to be known simply as
the goofy comic. “Which is hard when it’s
such a big movie,” he says of the 2011 hit. “And particularly stateside, when it’s probably what 90 per cent of the
people know you from. But you always just want to find the best work. Not to
tick a box. I ended up doing comedy by accident really. It’s not like it was a
life plan or anything.”

O’Dowd was born in
Boyle, County Roscommon. His father is a graphic designer and his mother a
psychotherapist. He has brought many of his childhood tales to the screen in
Moone Boy, the show he created for Sky TV. “I
mean, we kind of look at it all... not through rose-tinted glasses, but
certainly, I had a lovely childhood, so I wasn’t necessarily worried about
dealing with issues from my past. There are moments when my family would be like,
‘That’s not how I fuckin’ remember it!’ But for the most part, the vast
majority of it… relationship-wise it’s totally accurate to how I grew up. A lot
of the stories kind of come and go. Some of them are based in reality and then
you make them funnier in some way, or make them more interesting to watch.”

But he thinks the
show’s now on its last legs. There are only so many stories he can tell about
11- and 12-year-old boys, although he has a Truffaut-esque desire to return to
the characters when they are a bit older. One story he could put in, if he ever
followed up that idea, is about a bike ride he went on, aged 14. “It was during the summer holidays. There
was very little happening. I come from a very small place. I went with these
two friends, John and Dermott. We cycled maybe 80 miles. It took two days. We
pitched a tent. I’d forgotten about that. We pitched a tent and when we woke up
we were in a traffic island.”

It didn’t put him off
cycling, and when he was acting on Broadway in Of Mice and Men, opposite James
Franco, he would cycle to work and back every night. On stage he became a big
fan of his co-star. “James is great. I
think he’s genuinely trying to do interesting things. Not everybody is. He
takes a lot of flak for it, which I’ve never really understood. If he wasn’t so
handsome, I think he’d be celebrated much more.”

But his recollection
of playing a venture capitalist in the US drama series Girls is more down to
earth. “It wasn’t an iconic show when I
was doing it. It just felt like another kind of TV gig. You could tell that
they’re all very smart, and it felt quite raw, which was nice… I’m kind of
amazed to see it take off, and you don’t know that it’s going to be such a
massive thing. But they really keyed into what people wanted.”

I’m left with the
impression that giving people what they want is not O’Dowd’s objective.
Otherwise he would be happily revelling in comic roles, rather than taking on
meaty stage roles and playing journalists on a mission. He’s considered and
serious and wants to challenge himself and people’s perceptions of him. Playing
a journalist brings back memories of working on a student newspaper when he was
young. “I wanted to be a journalist quite
a lot when I was in school. And I didn’t get the grades to go to the journalism
colleges… I don’t know how they were so hard to get into given the level of
journalism generally.”

“Thanks,” I respond. To which O’Dowd lets out a hearty laugh.
His wife, Dawn O’Porter, is a television presenter and they have just had their
first child, Art. When he talks about Walsh, it’s in reverential tones: “He’s a
great journalist with a lot of integrity.”
And that’s how O’Dowd plays him in The Program